Virtues and Vices – Hanno Sauer: Is Moral Evolutionary?
发布时间 2024-12-09 14:33:02 来源
What is a virtue and what is a vice? What does it mean to be good? These are questions we ask ourselves in relation to society, oneself and perhaps one's God. In this series I'm going to be joined by Hannah Sauer, who is an Associate Professor at the University of Utrecht in the Philosophy Department. Hello, welcome. Now you are working, as I understand it, on the evolutionary basis of morality. Are right and wrong or virtue and vice something we can see as a function of evolution of our adapted natures? Yes, it's not only about that, but it plays an important part and I think we ignore the fact that we are evolved creatures, that we are a product of natural processes of mutation and selection and inheritance. We ignore that at our peril. I think if we want to study what morality is, how it functions, what it can be and what it's supposed to be, we benefit a lot from studying its origins.
什么是美德，什么是恶习？做好人意味着什么？这些是我们在社会中、对自己以及可能对神灵自我问询的问题。在这个系列中，我将与乌得勒支大学哲学系的副教授汉娜·萨尔合作探讨这些话题。你好，欢迎加入。据我了解，你正在研究道德的进化基础。善与恶、美德与恶习是否可以被看作是我们适应性进化的结果？是的，这不仅仅与此有关，但确实起到重要的作用。我认为如果我们忽视了作为进化生物的事实，忽视了我们是突变、选择和遗传等自然过程产物的事实，后果将不堪设想。我认为，如果我们想研究道德是什么、如何运作、它可以是什么以及应该是什么，那么研究其起源会带来很大帮助。
So this is an old project. It's basically the Nietzschean project of the genealogy of morality, where you try to investigate where do our norms and values come from and what does that tell us about which of them are good or bad, which of them are desirable or undesirable, which of them should be embraced and which of them should be abandoned. And evolutionary theory is now one, perhaps one of the most powerful tools and theoretical conceptual frameworks that allow us to pursue this genealogical project at the level of modern science with the best available evidence and the best available theoretical tools to understand where morality comes from. It's not the whole story, but I think it's a very, very important part that we cannot really ignore.
这其实是一个旧项目，基本上是尼采的道德谱系学项目的延续。这个项目试图探究我们的规范和价值观从何而来，以及这些了解如何帮助我们判断哪些规范和价值观是好的或坏的，哪些是我们期望或不期望的，哪些应该被接受，哪些又应该被摒弃。进化理论现在可以说是这个谱系项目的重要工具之一，提供了强有力的理论框架，以及现代科学水平下最好的证据和工具，帮助我们理解道德从何而来。这虽然不是全部，但我认为它是一个非常重要的部分，我们无法忽视。
And where is our understanding of that at the moment? I mean, when you go to the back of the beginning of genealogy, where do we start? I mean, when evolutionary theory, it's not that old, right? It's like 170 years old. And of course, it was always met with resistance. And part of the resistance was, I think, normatively morally motivated because people thought that it paints this bleak picture of the world and it paints this very, very grim and unforgiving picture of what life is like, animal life and also human animal life. And one big thought was that if it's really true that we have this struggle for survival and it's all about competition and about nature, red and tooth and claw, and just ruthlessness gets you ahead.
目前，我们对这一问题的理解处于什么位置呢？我的意思是，当你回溯到家谱的开端时，我们从哪里开始呢？我指的是，进化论并不是那么古老，对吧？它大约有170年的历史。当然，进化论自问世以来就一直受到抵制。其中一部分抵制，我认为是出于规范性的道德动机，因为人们认为进化论描绘了一幅悲观的世界图景，呈现了一种非常严酷和无情的生命图景，包括动物生命和人类的动物性生命。一个重要的观点是，如果我们真的在为生存而奋斗，而这一切都关乎竞争和赤裸裸的天然本性，那么只要无情才能胜出，这是否真是我们的实情呢？
If that's what shapes species and if that's what life is about, you couldn't possibly have anything noble or altruistic or hopeful. You couldn't have any ideals. You couldn't have self-sacrifice. You couldn't have just even basic kindness. And I think it took a long while for people to appreciate that that is not true. That conflict between the seemingly ruthlessly competitive picture painted by evolutionary theory, biological evolution, and the kinds of traits and virtues and vices and moral attitudes that we want to understand, being nice, being kind, being altruistic, compassionate, caring about fairness and equality and so on, that that conflict was merely apparent.
如果这就是塑造物种的原因，如果这就是生命的本质，那么你不可能拥有任何高尚、无私或充满希望的东西。你不会拥有任何理想，也不会有自我牺牲，甚至连基本的善良都是不可能的。我认为，人们花了很长时间才意识到这种想法并不正确。进化论描绘了一幅看似无情竞争的画面，与我们希望理解的那些特质、品德、罪恶以及道德态度之间，比如友善、善良、无私、同情、关心公平和平等等等的冲突，仅仅是一种表面的矛盾。
And it just took a deeper understanding of how evolution works to get to a point where we could understand, ah, that's how basic features of morality can evolve and can be reconciled with the picture painted by evolution. I was going to say, is part of that shift when we started to get the deeper understanding that allow the discovery of DNA and the genetic framework. I think there's a very, in terms of a sort of popular understanding, Richard Dawkins' book titled The Selfish Gene, which of course itself contains a moral judgment. Is that a helpful way of understanding it or does it. It is, it is, and it's funny as you say that because I think The Selfish Gene is perhaps the most misunderstood title in the history of the 20th century in science, at least, in non-fiction, at least.
要理解我们如何能够明白道德基本特征的演化，就需要对进化原理有更深入的了解。这种理解让我们知道这些特征如何通过进化得以协调。我本来想说，这种改变的一部分当我们开始更深入理解基因和遗传框架时就发生了。我认为大众对这一主题的理解部分来自著名作家理查德·道金斯的书《自私的基因》。这本书本身就包含了一种道德判断。这种理解方式是否有帮助呢？确实是有帮助的，而且很有趣的是，我认为《自私的基因》可能是20世纪科学史上非小说类作品中被误解得最严重的书名之一。
It just invites this misunderstanding that the point of the book is supposed to be we are evolved creatures and therefore hopelessly selfish, and that's never going to change. In fact, once we, as you said, put the evolutionary framework of natural selection of traits, once we put that together with an understanding of how genes work and what they are, and we combine these two and think about the relation between these two mechanisms of mutation and selection and inheritance. We can then see that it's precisely because genes are the basic unit that is subjected to this process of natural selection, where basic forms of altruism can come from, because we care about other beings, because they are, they house essentially copies of our genes.
这个句子的中文表达：这很容易让人误解这本书的观点是，我们是进化而来的生物，因此注定自私，这一点永远不会改变。事实上，正如你所说的，当我们把自然选择的进化框架与基因的运作原理结合起来思考，并分析变异、选择和遗传这两个机制之间的关系时，我们可以看到，正因为基因是自然选择过程的基本单位，才会出现某些形式的利他主义。这是因为我们关心其他生命，是因为他们在某种意义上拥有我们基因的拷贝。
So it's the gene itself that selfish world can actually. Exactly, exactly. It's the gene that selfish, and it's the selfishness of the gene. It's a bit of a metaphor, of course, but genes are copy making things, and they use certain vehicles, us, organisms, to make copies of themselves, and that makes these organisms non-selfish, because in order to reproduce successfully, you need to care very deeply about people that are related to you and then carry your genes. And that's only the most basic form of altruism, of course, where you care about other people because they are very closely related to you, but it is, of course, one of the most intense forms of selection in favor of a kind of altruistic trait, because we are all the descendants of people that cared about their kids, right? And all the people who didn't care about their kids, they never came to descendants, because they're just not around anymore.
所以，自私的其实是基因本身。没错，基因是自私的，这是基因自私的表现。当然，这有点像比喻，基因是复制自身的机器，它们利用某些载体，就是我们——生物体，来复制自身。这使得这些生物体表现得不自私，因为为了成功繁殖，你需要非常关心与你有关系的人，他们携带着与你相同的基因。当然，这只是利他主义最基本的形式，你关心其他人是因为他们与你有很近的亲缘关系。但这也是一种利他特性被强烈选择的形式，因为我们都是那些关心自己后代的人的后代。而那些不关心自己后代的人则没有后代，因为他们早已从这个世界上消失了。
And so that is a basic insight. It's called kin-selection or inclusive fitness, where we started to understand, and that was in the middle of the 20th century, those after World War II, where we started to understand, okay, if we've put natural selection together with certain other types of knowledge about how biology works, we can understand how basic forms of morality, altruism, and cooperation emerge. We can then layer on top of that an understanding of other types of mechanisms that lead to different forms of cooperation and mutual support and helping and an orientation towards the common good.
这就是一个基本的见解，叫做“亲缘选择”或者“包容性适应度”。在20世纪中期，也就是二战之后，我们开始理解如果把自然选择和一些关于生物运作方式的知识结合起来，可以理解基础形式的道德、利他主义和合作是如何出现的。在此基础上，我们还可以进一步理解引导到不同合作形式、相互支持、互助合作以及关注共同利益的其他机制。
One of the things that I think intuitively people think of this can't be adaptive. Is there an evolutionary or an adaptive account we can supply that would be satisfactory of certain behaviors such as somebody giving their life for either to protect others, or for an ideal, to give your life for an abstract cause, which we know people do? Yeah, if by doing something that will get you killed, you thereby save your 10 kids, then it's clear that that makes sense for instance. So there's no difficulty in providing the evolutionary account of that. Then in many cases, you have a less straightforward connection between self-sacrifice leading towards your own demise and the benefits of that.
有些行为，例如有人为了保护他人或一项理想而牺牲自己的生命，从直觉上来看，人们可能会觉得这不具备适应性。那么，我们能否为这种行为提供一个令人满意的进化或适应性解释呢？比如说，如果一个人通过某种行为，即使会因此丧命，但却能拯救他们的十个孩子，那么这是显而易见合乎逻辑的情况，因此提供进化上的解释毫不困难。然而，在许多情况下，自我牺牲与其带来的好处之间的联系并不那么直接或显而易见。
Now, it could just be that there is just a sort of mental illness that makes people act this way. So in that case, it would be fine and we wouldn't need to supply an evolutionary explanation. It could also be true. Right, it could be maladaptive. It could be just like some people engage in self-destructive behavior and substance abuse, so on and so on. That could be an explanation where you would just wouldn't need to account for it, like where's the indirect adaptiveness. But you can also tell very subtle types of stories.
现在，这种行为可能只是由于某种精神疾病导致的。如果是这样，那就没问题了，我们不需要提供一个进化的解释。也有可能是真的，对，这种行为可能是不适应的。就像有些人会从事自我毁灭的行为和滥用药物等等。这种情况下，你不需要寻找间接适应性的解释。但你也可以讲述一些非常微妙的故事。
So an evolutionary story could be a kind of misfiring story. Right? So we still have sexual attraction and sexual arousal and sexual desire. Even when we know that everyone involved is using contraception, for instance. Now, sexual desire and arousal was in a way selected for and the function it performs is to make people intensely motivated to reproduce. Right? And to seek out opportunities for reproduction. And it still does that. Even when the physical conditions for successful reproduction are not present, because everyone's using effective contraceptive, that kind of knowledge has no effect on sexual arousal.
所以，一个进化论的故事也可能是一种失效的故事，对吧？即使我们知道每个人都在使用避孕措施，我们仍然会有性吸引、性唤起和性欲。性欲和性唤起在某种程度上是被选择出来的，其功能是让人们强烈地想要繁殖，并寻找繁殖的机会，即便实际的繁殖条件并不存在，因为所有人都在有效避孕，这种知识对性唤起没有影响。
Now, that's kind of misfiring where a trait that has evolved to perform a certain type of function is still triggered and set off by certain conditions in the environment. Even when that kind of function couldn't be adequately or successfully performed under those specific conditions. Now, for instance, with terrorists who commit suicidal bombings or something like that. That is something that's a little bit of a mystery. Why do people do that? But it could be a misfiring like that where a trait to display heroism for the group in a very, very publicly visible and risky way. That kind of trait could have an evolutionary rationale.
这种情况有点像“误触发”，即一个进化为了特定功能的特征在某些环境条件下被激活。即使在这些特定条件下，这个功能可能无法适当地或成功地实现。比如，对于那些实施自杀式爆炸的恐怖分子，这是个谜：为什么他们会这样做？可能这也是一种“误触发”，即表现极端英雄主义、为群体做出牺牲这个特征在某些不恰当的环境中被激活，这种特征可能有进化的理由。
And it kind of misfires because it can generalize in weird and flexible cultural species like us. It can generalize into areas where it doesn't have any reproductive benefits anymore, which it arguably doesn't. Unless you do something for the reputation of your family, there could also be that story. But it could just be a misfiring of a trait that otherwise works for you where you were being very, very courageous and willing to take risks in combat for the group. Risking your own demise has very high rewards in principle. It could be a story like that.
它有点失灵，因为它能够在我们这样奇特且具有弹性的文化物种中进行泛化。它可能泛化到某些领域，在这些领域中它不再具有任何生殖优势，这显然是不具备的。除非你为你的家族声誉做某些事情，也可能有这样的情况。但它也可能只是某种特质的失灵，而这种特质在其它情况下对你有益，比如当你为了团队在战斗中表现得非常勇敢并愿意冒险时。从理论上说，冒险可能带来很高的回报。故事可能就是这样的。
I'm not entirely sure which one of these is correct. But certainly the lesson that we can draw from decades of research on this is that usually when people say, I bet you can't explain that with evolution, usually a couple of years later people come with a very, very plausible story for how that works. Now, I do. Now, you touched earlier on this idea of different levels of selection, different levels of adaptation. It might not just be the gene, but also the meme. And your book tracks the history of morality through biology and through culture and through philosophy. And how these different strands, as you see it, tie together. Because most of the morality that we talk about now is quite highly codified. It's a cultural inheritance or feels like a cultural inheritance more than likely. How does the cultural build on top of evolution?
我不太确定这些观点中哪个是正确的。但我们可以从几十年的研究中得出的教训是，通常当人们说“我敢打赌你无法用进化来解释这一点”时，往往几年后就有人提出一个非常合理的解释。现在，你刚才提到的关于不同层次的选择和适应的观点，可能不仅仅涉及基因，还包括“模因”（即文化传播单位）。你的书通过生物学、文化和哲学追溯了道德的历史，并探讨了这些不同方面是如何联系在一起的。因为我们现在谈论的大多数道德观念通常相当系统化，更像是一种文化遗产。那么，文化是如何在进化的基础上发展的呢？
Yeah, I mean, we are clearly the species that by far, I mean nothing else can be even close to it, that by far generates the most intricate and complex and rich reservoir of cultural knowledge and skills and institutions and information and norms and practices and rituals. The thing about us is that we are not just cultural beings, but we are capable of producing cumulative culture. So one generation does something, hands it down to the next generation. That generation modifies and improves it a little bit and then bequests these modifications and improvements to the next generation.
是的，我的意思是，我们显然是唯一一个能够创造出极其复杂和丰富的文化知识、技能、制度、信息、规范、实践和仪式的物种。我们的特别之处在于，我们不仅是具备文化的存在，还能够创造累积的文化。也就是说，一代人创造了一些东西，然后传给下一代。下一代稍微修改和改进这些东西，再把这些修改和改进传给再下一代。
So that accumulates over generations over hundreds of years, thousands of years, hundreds of thousands of years. We get that kind of very, very speedy process of evolutionary change that accumulates over time. And we are extremely good at social learning, which is absorbing information not just via genetic transmission, which always takes one generation. You need to make new people to transmit that kind of information. When I tell you something, it's very quick, right? We don't need to wait 15 years for the next generation to be produced, but it's very, very quick and spreads much more quickly.
这在几百年、几千年、几十万年的代际积累过程中形成了一种非常迅速的进化变化。我们在人类历史上积累了这种快速发展的过程。我们在社会学习方面非常擅长，也就是通过非基因传递来获取信息。基因传递通常需要一代时间，需要新一代人的诞生才能传递这种信息。而当我告诉你一些信息时，速度非常快，对吧？我们不需要等15年等到下一代出现，而是传播得非常迅速和广泛。
That sets off a process of co-evolution between cultural inheritance and genetic inheritance, which feed back into each other. They feed back into the sense that certain cultural behaviours will shape who gets to reproduce. Exactly. So being a really good storyteller, being a really good cook, being really good at language, being really good at dancing, that could be an advantage from now on. So any kind of thing that would depend on social learning will then be favoured by natural selection in this cultural environment. And that's exactly what we've seen. And we've seen that, you know, basically the upright posture and the way that we look today shaped by cooking skills.
这引发了一种文化遗传和基因遗传之间的共同进化过程，它们相互影响。具体来说，某些文化行为会影响谁有机会繁殖。正是如此。比如，成为一个优秀的故事讲述者、厨艺高超的人、语言能力强的人或善于舞蹈的人，现在可能会是一种优势。因此，任何依赖于社交学习的行为都会在这种文化环境中被自然选择所青睐。这正是我们所观察到的现象。可以说，我们今天的直立姿态和外貌都是因为厨艺的发展而受到影响。
We have reduced the size of our gut by externalising most of our digestion, right? By cutting things up and fermenting them and cooking them and so on and so on. And that allows us to save energy. So the big belly goes away and we can all invest in these ridiculous heads that we have. And that's what happened. So here you see a co-evolution between cultural techniques and how these create then the kind of niche in which the rest of our biological evolution happens. And once we have that, we can also have cultural diversity. We can have different styles of dress and we can also have different norms. We can have different rituals for initiation, different expectations for who gets to eat what, different gender roles and so on and so on.
我们通过将大部分消化过程外部化来减小肠胃规模，对吗？通过切碎食物、发酵和烹饪等等方法。这样可以帮助我们节省能量。因此，我们不再需要大肚子，可以把能量投资在我们超大的脑袋上。这就是所发生的事情。所以你会看到文化技术与生物进化之间的共同演化。通过这些文化技术，我们创造了一个让我们的生物进化得以发生的生态位。一旦我们拥有这种条件，我们就能产生文化多样性。我们可以有不同的着装风格，不同的规范，我们也可以有不同的成年礼仪式、关于谁吃什么食物的不同期待、不同的性别角色，等等。
And that is the kind of world that we still live in today, one with intense plasticity and flexibility and an enormous amount of an enormously rich cultural heritage that we have become utterly dependent on. I've been talking to a number of the other speakers in this series quite a lot about virtue ethics. The idea that's locust for the good is in the individual and how that jostles with more communitarian ideas of the ideology of goodness. Do you see an evolutionary account? I mean, how an evolutionary account of it? Do you see that fitting in? Is there only room really for the communitarian idea of the good?
这就是我们今天仍然生活的世界，一个具有高度可塑性和灵活性的世界，拥有丰富的文化遗产，我们已经完全依赖于此。在这个系列中，我与其他几位演讲者深入讨论了美德伦理。这个观点认为，善的核心在于个人，但这和更具共同体思想的善的意识形态如何碰撞呢？你怎么看待有关这种观念的进化论解释？我想问，进化论的解释有何适用之处？还是实际上只存在共同体思想的善的空间？
No, lots of room for that. So one of the. When you ask people what's the list of virtues, people often mention honesty for instance. And we can tell a very, very convincing story why we care so much about honesty and trust. Because again, for individuals from a species who are intensely dependent on acquiring information from other people, right, there is an enormous problem which is that we don't want to acquire false information. We don't want to be deceived. We don't want to be fed falsehoods because we depend on the skills that we want to learn and the stuff that we want to know to be accurate.
不，不必担心，有很多空间去理解这点。当你问人们列出美德的时候，人们通常会提到诚实。我们可以讲一个非常有说服力的故事来解释我们为什么如此重视诚实和信任。因为对于一个极度依赖从他人那里获取信息的物种来说，有一个巨大的问题就是我们不想获取错误的信息。我们不希望被欺骗，也不希望被灌输虚假的东西，因为我们依赖于要学习的技能和想要知道的事情的准确性。
So already you have an idea for why it would be enormously important to moralize your quality as someone who transmits information, which is the virtue of honesty, right? Being an honest person just means that that person is trustworthy when it comes to transmitting information and skills because that person is unlikely to lie. That person is unlikely to lie even under pressure, for instance, that person is unlikely to be not even about lying, but to be wrong, to be a bullshitter, to be opportunistic and so on and so on and so on.
所以，你已经明白为什么将信息传递的品质道德化是极其重要的，也就是诚信的美德，对吗？做一个诚实的人意味着在传递信息和技能时值得信任，因为这个人不太可能撒谎。即使在压力下，这个人也不太可能撒谎，也不太可能犯错、胡扯或见风使舵，等等。
So I don't think there's any conflict at all between a virtue ethical story and these other types of stories. Usually when you look at either everyday moralizing or professional moral philosophy, you see that what happens in everyday moralizing but also in professional moral philosophy is that people just trying to articulate very, very subtly. The internal perspective on these rationales that can be looked at from the outside and then allow for an evolutionary description, but it's really the same thing. It's like describing a painting as a chemical mix on the canvas versus a depiction of a story that's in all its aesthetic qualities. Both are legitimate and I think both are indispensable.
所以，我认为美德伦理的观点与其他类型的观点之间根本没有冲突。通常，当你观察日常的道德评价或专业的道德哲学时，你会发现，不论是在日常道德评价中还是在专业道德哲学中，人们都在努力地非常微妙地表达这些观点的内在视角。这些观点可以从外部进行审视，从而允许一种进化的描述，但实际上都是同一回事。这就像把一幅画作为画布上的化学混合物来描述，与描述它在所有美学品质中的故事一样。两种描述都是合理的，我认为两者都是不可或缺的。
It's not like you could tell the evolutionary story about how morality works and once you've understood where honesty comes from and why it's so important to us, you don't need the internal perspective anymore. No, in everyday interaction between you and me and third person is on its own. It's very valuable social currency and vocabulary and form mutual understanding. I'm just going to tell you that person isn't really honest with you. Or that person, I wouldn't trust that person. That still remains a legitimate language game, so to speak, that performs its function for us and in the way that we organize our life together.
这不是说你可以通过进化故事来理解道德的运作方式，只要你明白诚实的来源以及它为何对我们如此重要，就不再需要从内心角度去看待了。在日常的人际互动中，你、我和第三者之间的交流本身就是一种非常有价值的社交货币和沟通工具，它有助于互相理解。如果我告诉你，那个人对你不诚实，或者我不信任那个人，这些表达方式仍然是合理的"语言游戏"，在我们共同生活和组织生活的方式中发挥着它的作用。
But at the same time, we can also tell an underlying story about why that became important in the first place because it's very, very important. It's not an accident that it's so important for us and for other animals that don't depend on acquiring information horizontally from other members of their species. They don't moralize honesty so much. No, of course. There's a distinction that anthropologists make, I think, between guilt cultures and shame cultures, one of which essentially morality is internalized in one of them. It's semi-outs to the tribe.
但与此同时，我们也可以讲述一个背景故事，解释为什么这一点最初变得重要，因为它非常重要。这并不是偶然的，对于我们和那些不依赖于从同类那里水平获取信息的其他动物而言，它的重要性是不可忽视的。那些动物并不太注重将诚实道德化。当然，文化中存在一种区分，人类学家将其称为罪感文化和耻感文化。在其中一种文化中，道德是内化的，而在另一种文化中，道德是部分外化给了部落。
Is there a sort of chronological relationship between these as you see it? I mean, do we start with shame cultures and move to the idea that morality is internalized and therefore more? Usually the idea is that you have these two different types of responding emotionally to bad behavior, your own bad behavior. If you've done something wrong, some sort of transgression has happened, you can respond with shame or you can respond with guilt, and the idea is that shame targets more the whole person. So the reactions are accordingly, you want to hide yourself, you want to sink into the ground, you want to disappear, and so on and so on.
在你看来，这些之间是否存在某种时间上的关系？我的意思是，我们是否是从“耻感文化”开始，然后逐渐发展到道德观念被内化这种想法？通常的观点是，面对不当行为时，人们有两种不同的情感反应方式：一种是面对自己的过错时，可能会感到羞耻，另一种是感到内疚。所谓羞耻感，更多的是对整个人的否定。因此相应的反应是，你会想要隐藏自己，想要钻进地面，或者想要消失等等。
That seems to be a very universal culture, universal reaction to things that elicit shame. And guilt would be more action-focused. It's more like, you know, I did something wrong. It doesn't mean I'm a terrible person in general, even if this one thing was a terrible thing to do, but it sort of doesn't target the whole person. And some people think that there is a kind of historical, I wouldn't say progression, but a tendency of societies to move from a stronger emphasis on shame, as they grow in technological sophistication, economic productivity, group size, and so on and so on, to move on to a somewhat stronger emphasis on guilt.
这似乎是一种非常普遍的文化现象，对引发羞耻感的事情的普遍反应。而内疚更专注于行动本身。这更像是，你知道，我做错了一件事。这并不意味着我整体上是个糟糕的人，即使这件事情本身是一个糟糕的行为，但它并不针对整个个人。有些人认为，随着科技的进步、经济生产力的提高、群体规模的扩大等等，社会可能会从更强调羞耻逐渐趋向更强调内疚。
I'm not entirely sure that that story will in the end be fully vindicated, but it could be that there's something about small-scale interaction that makes it make shame more relevant, because you interact with people that you know and that know you as a whole person, rather than interacting with someone just once or twice, where it's only really the thing that you moralize, it's only really this one thing that this person did. I'm not entirely sure whether I would buy into this historical narrative, but apparently this is a distinction that you find in when you look at different societies and different cultures.
我不完全确定这个说法最终会被完全证实，但小范围的互动可能会让羞耻感更为显著。因为在这种互动中，你会和那些了解你的整个人，而不仅仅是某一面的人交流。相反，当你与某人只互动一两次时，通常只会关注到你在意的某个特定行为。尽管我不太确定是否完全接受这个历史观点，但显然在研究不同社会和文化时，会发现这种差别的存在。
And you touched on this, I've done a question of how we still have sexual urges, even when perceptions evolve and so on. Historically, moral codes in very many religions are very preoccupied with the question of sex, and if we're producing an adaptive account of morality, why is it that so many morality is a keen on policing that most natural of urges? Yeah, I mean, we always, basically every society, police is with a surprisingly high degree of intensity. These existential things, food is usually moralized, and it doesn't have to be the 600 rules in Judaism. Nowadays, we have intense rules around food as well, right? And if you want to go out in Paris or something, there's going to be at least 600 rules that you implicitly obey. Exactly, the tipping and all the demeanour and so on and so on. Just intensely, normatively structured. Birth, death, these types of questions are always policed. They're always moralized in some way.
你提到这个问题，我一直在思考，为什么即使我们的观念在不断演变，我们仍然会有性冲动。历史上，很多宗教的道德规范都非常关注性的问题。如果我们把道德看作一种适应性的表现，为什么这些道德如此热衷于约束这种最自然的冲动呢？确实，几乎所有社会对于这些存在性的事情——比如食物——都抱有令人惊讶的高强度关注，实际上也不只是犹太教的600条规则。现代社会对食物也有严格的规定。如果你在巴黎外出用餐，实际上要默默遵守至少600条规则，比如小费、举止等，都受到了严格的文化规范。生死、这些类型的问题也总是受到约束，无论如何都会被某种方式道德化。
It can be totally, you know, libertarianistic, or it can be totally coercive and repressive, but there's going to be some type of moralization that people associate. With that, in sex is another one of these very important topics that is that every society obsesses about. So in the 60s and 70s, you have, okay, now we want to have this type of freedom from capitalism and from oppression and so on and so on. Okay, how does sex look now for people like us? And then they have some idea of that. And now these days we have a very intense focus, perhaps, on vulnerability and marginalization and discrimination and disadvantage, and then our thinking and moralizing about sex becomes obsessed with these features. And some of that is legitimate and some overshoot the target, as always, with any social movement and any social revolution.
这段文字可以翻译成中文：
这件事可能会完全是自由主义式的，也可能是完全强制和压制的，但人们一定会对其进行某种道德化。性正是每个社会都会非常关注的重要话题之一。在上世纪60年代和70年代，人们希望从资本主义和压迫中获得自由。那么，像我们这样的人对性的看法是什么样的呢？现在，人们非常关注脆弱性、边缘化、歧视和劣势等问题，我们对性的思考和道德化就会变得极其专注于这些特征。其中一些关注是合理的，而如往常一样，任何社会运动和社会变革都会有一些过犹不及的地方。
So I would just say it's probably very understandable that we can't intensity about sex and love and everything that's associated with it, so we end up moralizing it and policing it and coming up with norms that reflect who we are and how we want to live together. At the same time, we also see that there is this great flexibility in what the kinds of norms are that we police sexual behavior with and human beings have lived in all sorts of arrangements. But you think if it was such a fundamental issue to do with reproductions, those norms wouldn't be so widely varying if our sexual morality is adaptive species-wide. How do you account for the fact that, actually? I think it's just because the sexual norms interact with other types of structures in society, power structures, wealth, technology, political structures, and so on and so on.
我会说，很容易理解我们在性、爱以及与之相关的一切上的无法精确把握。所以我们最终会对这些问题进行道德化，并进行监管，制定反映我们身份和共同生活方式的规范。同时，我们也看到，用来监管性行为的规范有很大的灵活性，人类在各种生活方式中生存。但你可能会想，如果这是一个与繁衍密切相关的根本性问题，这些规范就不会有如此大的差异了，因为我们的性道德应该是全物种适应的。你如何解释这种现象呢？我认为这只是因为性规范与社会中的其他结构相互交织，如权力结构、财富、技术、政治结构等等。
So that's why once you move on for the first time, a couple thousand years ago, twelve thousand, but likely not more. Once you move on to very intense social stratification and hierarchy, you find that sexuality and access to sexual opportunities also becomes hierarchical and you get these intensely polygynous societies where a tiny group of wealthy men acquire dozens, hundreds of women and really a large amount of the males in that society are shut out from reproduction entirely. That can survive for a while, given the kind of society that that system is set up in, but it can also be replaced by a competing system. So at one point in time, cultures came up with the idea that maybe we should have a kind of normative monogamy.
这就是为什么一旦人类第一次进步到某个阶段，比如几千年前、大约一万两千年前，那时开始出现非常强烈的社会分层和等级制度，你会发现性和获得性机会也变得具有等级性。在这种情况下，会出现极端的一夫多妻社会，其中一小部分富裕男性占有几十甚至上百个女性，而社会中大量男性完全被排斥在繁衍之外。这种制度可以在某种社会条件下存在一段时间，但也可能被竞争的制度替代。因此，在某个时间点，不同文化开始产生这样一种想法：也许我们应该实行一种规范的一夫一妻制。
Maybe we don't want to have the situation where you have a bunch of wealthy, old men monopolizing all the women. Because that doesn't benefit the women, it doesn't benefit 99% of the men, so maybe we can have something else and we can have a basically one-on-one kind of situation. And that turned out to be much preferable to the vast majority of people, not everyone, of course, not to the people who used to have the men who used to have the patriarchy and the harem. But it turned out to be beneficial for the vast majority of people and, interestingly, it also turned out to be hugely beneficial for kids because basically that kind of arrangement is a huge improvement when it comes to what kind of learning environment is created for a child. Because it's basically a kind of social scaffolding that encourages fathers to invest much more energy and time and knowledge transmission into their kids.
也许我们不希望出现那种有一群富有的老男人垄断所有女性的情况。因为这对女性没有好处，对99%的男性也没有好处。因此，我们或许可以采取另一种方式，实行基本上的一对一关系。这种方式对绝大多数人来说要更好，当然并不是对所有人都如此，特别是那些曾经享有父权制和后宫制度的人可能不太喜欢。但事实证明，这对绝大多数人是有利的，而且有趣的是，这对孩子也非常有益。因为这种安排在为孩子创造学习环境方面是一种很大的改进。因为这实际上是一种社会支撑结构，鼓励父亲投入更多的精力、时间和知识来培养孩子。
Because they have much more. They have kids, they're around much more. And that turns out to be a huge factor in also accelerating culture evolution, because again, for social learners like us, growing up in an environment that's much better for facilitating social learning is a huge boost. In fact, that is what happened and that's why this norm of normative monogamy spread very easily to various different cultures and gradually replaced intense forms of patriarchal sexual inequality. That really worked to the benefit of only a very, very small number of men.
因为他们有更多。他们有孩子，并且更多地参与其中。这成为促进文化加速演变的重要因素之一，因为对我们这样的社会学习者来说，在一个有利于社会学习的环境中成长是一个巨大的助力。事实上，这就是为什么一夫一妻制的规范能够轻易传播到不同文化，并逐渐取代严重形式的男性性别不平等。这种不平等实际上只对极少数男人有利。
Now, to wind up, because I'm afraid we're only having time, so many accounts through the history of morality say that you have a nature which, and mastering that nature, going against that nature is part of the essence of morality, that you control your base impulses, animal instinct, so we want to put it. Is that just plain wrong? I think it's mostly wrong. I think it's mostly wrong. The illusion that that is what morality is about is that we notice the demands that morality makes on us, only in cases when that conflict between what I'd like to do and what I'm supposed to do arises.
现在，时间有限，我们来总结一下。历史上关于道德的许多观点认为，道德的一部分本质在于你具有某种天性，而克服这种天性，违背这种天性，是道德的核心，即控制住你的基本冲动和动物本能。所以，我们想问，这种观点完全错误吗？我认为大部分是错的。我们之所以有这种错觉，认为道德就是这样，是因为我们通常只在自己想做的事与应该做的事产生冲突时，才会注意到道德对我们的要求。
Normally, there isn't really that conflict. Now we want to have a conversation and we are guided by norms and moral principles, but it's fine. We don't feel a conflict between that re-electo steel as well now. It just doesn't come up because it's guiding our behavior very, very fundamentally. We take turns and there's a whole rule book, a set of virtues that we live by that are part and parcel of what is good for us and what is part of our human nature and what is in our self-interest.
通常情况下，并不会真的出现那种冲突。现在我们想要进行对话，并以规范和道德原则为指导，但这没有问题。我们并未感受到与所谓的“再次当选”有任何矛盾。这种冲突根本不会出现，因为这些规范和原则非常根本地指导着我们的行为。我们轮流发言，遵循整套规则和美德。这些规则和美德不仅对我们有益，也是我们人性的一部分，符合我们的自身利益。
It's only that we feel the awkwardness of morality and the coercion of these requirements and principles only when there's sometimes a situation arising where we'd rather do something else right now. I think mostly that's wrong, that conflict between human nature and virtue is largely illusory. I would say that, of course, in order to live well, there's always going to be an element of delaying gratification, of getting up in the morning, being conscientious, being fair to other people.
我们只有在面对一些情况时，才会感受到道德上的尴尬和这些要求与原则的强制性，而这些情况可能让我们更想做其他事情。我认为，这种在人性与美德之间的冲突大多是虚幻的。可以说，为了过上美好的生活，总是需要有一些延迟满足的成分，比如早上起床、尽责、对他人公平等等。
There's always an element of control in that, of discipline, impulse control, foresight, not being driven by the deepest, wildest passions all the time. In that sense, I think that's the sort of phenomenology of virtue, I think, but there's not a deep conflict that in order to be virtuous, we need to suppress our real nature. In fact, I would suspect that that's a little bit of a Christian heritage where this idea that morality is about self-negation and rejecting physical impulses and so on and so on, that that's the core of morality, being a monk, being a saint, and so on but I don't think that is a very attractive picture anymore.
在这方面，总是有一个控制的元素，包括自律、控制冲动和预见性，而不是时时被最深层、最狂野的激情驱动。从这个意义上来说，我认为这是美德的现象学，但并不存在一种深刻的冲突，即为了做到有美德，我们需要压抑真实的天性。实际上，我怀疑这与一种基督教的传统有关，在这种传统中，道德被理解为自我否定、拒绝生理冲动等等，被视为道德的核心，比如当僧侣、当圣人等等。但我认为这已经不再是一个非常吸引人的观念了。
We've kept some elements of Christian morality around because they seem not so bad, but there are some other aspects where I think we're not so livable anymore and not so attractive anymore, and that's maybe where that picture comes from, it's mostly, I think, incorrect. Thank you, Adisar. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.
我们保留了一些基督教道德的元素，因为它们似乎还不错，但有其他一些方面，我认为已经不那么适宜生活，也不那么吸引人了，也许这就是那个想法的由来。不过大多数情况下，我认为这种看法是不对的。谢谢你，Adisar。非常感谢。谢谢。